Chapter VI: 95

ON THE ANTIQUITY OF TOBACCO-SMOKING

The beginnings of history—Ancestor worship—Man’s instinctive
craving for narcotics and stimulants—Ancient historic
allusions to smoking or burning of vegetable substances—Lieut.
Walpole’s account of an Arabic MS. which came into his hands
at Mosul—Nimrod a tobacco-smoker—Assyrian cylinders in the
British Museum—Noah a smoker, a Greek Church tradition—The
Moslem sage and the origin of the tobacco plant—Eulia Effendi’s
story of a tobacco pipe found in an old wall—Tobacco unknown
in Turkey before 1610—Dr. Yates mistakes an Egyptian painting
representing glass-blowers for a smoking party—Both Greeks and
Romans inhaled fumes of tussilago through a reed or pipe for
the cure of coughs and difficult breathing—Abbé Cocket and Dr.
Bruce on old clay pipes found in Normandy and among ruins in
Britain—Clay pipes found in Scotland and Ireland—Legendary lore
respecting their origin and use—The weed and the Portuguese
in India and Java—Palias and Meyen on the plant in India and
China—The Lazarists, Gabet and Huc, in Tartary and Thibet—The
cultivation and use of tobacco in China—The supposed antiquity
of the habit among the Chinese, who in their prehistoric
migrations may have carried seeds of the plant to America.